Small Honda Cars, Spearheading the Compact Vehicle Movement

Honda is looking to use India as its springboard to launch a new series of small cars before bringing then to the European market. The new breed of Honda cars are set to be launched to compete directly with their Japanese counterparts, Suzuki, who currently occupy over 50% of the current car sales within the country with their highly successful Suzuki Swift and Suzuki Alto.

This is a bold strategy for the Japanese manufacturer to take at such a delicate time in the economy, but it is clearly something that they feel will benefit them in the long run. India has a love affair with the car and Honda is very keen to capitalise on a slice of this market.

Popular cars in the country at present are extremely compact and small, which means that the Honda Jazz will probably be considered to be too big to mount a challenge to Suzuki’s dominance. Because of this Honda has gone back to the drawing board and designed a new mini car that currently goes under the codename of the 2CV, hopefully it doesn’t look like the Renault version.This new car has been touted for release in 2011 – 2012 and it will be going into direct competition with the Suzuki Swift and Alto.

If Honda can manage to bring their same brand of electronic wizardry and efficiency to this new car then it may well be a car that can topple the mighty Suzuki in the Indian car market. One thing that will have a direct effect on the cars success is the price. Initial reports claim that Honda will look to price the car around the annual salary of the average worker within the country. Whether or not this will be deemed to be too expensive is something we will have to wait and see.